Thursday, June 20, 2013

The Onion: "Financial Sector Thinks It’s About Ready To Ruin World Again"

Oh this is classic:

Via The Onion:Financial Sector Thinks It’s About Ready To Ruin World Again
Read it all, but some funny (true?) snippets:
-“People are beginning to feel at ease spending money and investing in their futures again,” Blankfein continued. “That’s the perfect time to step in and do what we do best: rip the heart right out of the world’s economy.”** See this commercial as back up:

-“On second thought, maybe we’ll wipe out the housing market again too, just for the hell of it,” Schnall quickly added. “Might as well, right?”**The current accepted idea of a housing recovery is going to be so hilarious in a year or so I chuckle everyday.

-“Now that the public’s efforts to curtail questionable Wall Street trading practices have all but ceased, it’s time for us to bring the world to its knees again,” said AIG CEO Robert Benmosche. “There are still plenty of opaque financial derivatives, high-frequency trading operations, and off-balance sheet transactions out there, all with virtually no federal regulation. Trust me, we can definitely work with that. And if anything, we can always just lobby for further concessions and deregulation in Washington—which, by the way, is so, so easy to do—and then we can cause as much damage as we want.”**No worries bulls, Janet Yellen is set to unleash QE Infinity TIMES Infinity come January but wowza, it's quite a way until then! Another commercial to help with the visual:

-"And while we’re at it, we’ll make sure we once again come away from this whole thing scot-free and far wealthier.”**It's true. What really drove me away from things market and trading was that every trader/investor/money manager is responsible for the way the market works. To turn a blind eye in the awe of an uptrend is dishonest and shows where your real drive is from.

6 comments:

Well, I can attest to the decline in the housing market. But what these guys are talking about, I don't know.

Two years ago, and for the previous decade, we, my mother and I, listed and sold about 120 properties a year. That would be around 10 a month.

The government seized Fannie Mae, and our bank, First National, lost over $125 million in real estate loans. It has since gone into receivership and the manager was fired.

We haven't gotten an assingment from Fannie Mae since. So business is down, way down, like 50%.

We had this one house that went under contract four times, and each time, the lender denied funding at the last minute.

Are you kidding me? Do you want to sell this house or not? If you pre-qualified the buyer for a loan, why would you deny the funds the day before closing? It doesn't make any sense.

What it means is that the owner, the mortgage holder, has to continue to pay property taxes and maintenance. And I have to continue to pay advertising. I also have to pay MLS dues and board membership and for access to Land Title and Carson Maps. Plus I have to drive by the property and inspect it once a week. That's time, money and gas. For a house that I've sold four times and couldn't close.

It's insane. I do my job. I inspect the property, do my research, give a price opinion, and advertise the property. Someone makes an offer, and at the last minute it's declined. So, what, now I have to start all over?

It costs me money to list and sell a house. Not that any of these financial gurus care. They all work on salary and bonuses. I work on pure commission alone.

Yeah, the housing market has been destroyed. But not by me. All I want to do is sell a house to a buyer. It's a simple agreement. He or she wants to buy the house, with pre-aproval for a loan it's a done deal. Until the lender backs out at the last minute.

WTF is going on here? I'm out there, finding these properties, doing inspections, writing price opions, and marketing these houses. That costs me a lot of money.

And these lenders, they pre-approve a buyer just so they can deny funding at the last minute?

Care to quantify this in percentage terms? Yes, it would be hilarious to claim recovery when you expected the market to drop -40% or even -20%. In that case, anyone saying recovery is worthy of being laughed at, I agree.

As for me, I see us going from a +7% environment, down to a flat or even -3 to -4% environment, erasing about half of the gains since the 2012 bottom. In other words, pretty boring, non-hilarious stuff. Do you disagree?

Brad, THE STREET is betting heavy that housing will lead the US economy back. Lets at least agree a -3/+4% equillibrium environment the next few years will not feed that idea. When I used to blog I would list so many examples of how housing is a joke right now, but now I just watch.